Amtrak ceased service from Michigan Central Station in Detroit in 1988. The depot has been vacant since.

From mini-mall to car museum, Matthew Moroun has heard every idea imaginable for what to do with the expansive concourse of the long-vacant Michigan Central Station train depot in Detroit.

But he’s starting to settle on an ambitious, if not audacious, concept that he calls “the oldest idea for the depot.”

Trains.

Like the kind that carried passengers to and from the Detroit train station for nearly 75 years before Amtrak ceased service in 1988 and the abandoned depot began a long decline that mirrored the city’s descent.

“It’s crazy, right?” Moroun said in an exclusive interview with Crain’s. “The idea that we’re most focused on now, the one that seems to make sense, is in the name of the building and it’s what it used to be used for.”

The son of billionaire transportation mogul Manuel “Matty” Moroun seems serious about making the depot a mass transit hub again as he embarks on a mission to save an iconic symbol of Detroit’s 20th century rise and fall.

Matthew Moroun is floating the idea to transportation planners and government officials ahead of the Michigan Central Station playing host Wednesday night to former Detroiters at the kickoff dinner for the fourth annual Detroit Homecoming, produced by Crain’s Detroit Business.

Matthew Moroun: Back to the future?

“If we decide to really push this ... it’s not to start out trying to solicit politicians and governments or whatever for money. It’s to see if I can get folks to embrace it, that future vision,” Moroun told Crain’s. “We need to put the depot back on the map.”

Moroun envisions the depot having a straight-shot rail line to Detroit Metropolitan Airport and being a stop for Amtrak’s high-speed train routes to Chicago and a connection to Ontario’s VIA through the adjacent rail tunnel that dips below the Detroit River.

One of the biggest obstacles to redeveloping the train station is its location along Michigan Avenue on the outskirts of Corktown, nearly two miles west of Campus Martius in the central business district.

To overcome that barrier, Moroun said a second QLine streetcar line could be built along Michigan Avenue to connect downtown with the depot (like there used to be in the first half of the 20th century, as evidenced by old rails exposed along Michigan).

“All of that is big bucks. I get that,” Moroun said. “But all of those moves are moves that happen over a long period of time because of a mass transit plan.”

In pitching the idea, Moroun is essentially seeking public feedback — a noticeable departure from the often reclusive nature of his family’s business dealings in Detroit.

Two influential players in Detroit’s transportation planning circles are receptive to the idea of the old train station going back online.

“I’m excited that Matthew and his family are putting the energy into it that they are and that they’re evaluating these different ideas and I think it should be on the table,” said Matt Cullen, CEO of M-1 Rail, the private nonprofit that runs the QLine.

Moroun has broached the idea of Amtrak trains running through the old train depot with Kirk Steudle, director of the Michigan Department of Transportation. Steudle said he’s receptive to the idea and connecting the old train station to the central business district in the same way the QLine street car connects New Center with downtown.

“I’ve had a number of people come up to me and say ‘How do we do something on Michigan Avenue like they did on Woodward?’” Steudle said. “If Matthew (Moroun) can be the person who brings together that group, well ... let’s continue having a conversation.”

Moroun is putting forward the idea just as MDOT is starting to consider long-term planning for the Amtrak train station at the corner of Woodward and Baltimore in New Center. The train station, which is easy to miss for passers-by, is near the QLine’s Baltimore Street stop.

MDOT owns 3 acres on the south side of the railroad crossing over Woodward that is envisioned for a future intermodal station for QLine and Amtrak trains, bus rapid transit and possibly autonomous vehicles when they hit the road.

Cullen thinks the intermodal station in New Center “still happens,” whether or not the old train station is resurrected.

But having two intermodal stations is not out of the question, Cullen said.

“It seems to me that there’s opportunity for both to be used in a transit mode over time,” said Cullen, who also is principal in Dan Gilbert’s Rock Ventures LLC. “I think they can perform different functions.”

Easy lifting, hard lifting

Chad Livengood/Crain's Detroit Business

Visitors tour the first floor concourse of the Michigan Central Station on July 13. The 110,000-square-foot concourse, with its marble walls and columns that soar to a 54-foot-tall ceiling, has limited commercial reuse options.

As he toys with the idea of trains parked outside the train station again, Matthew Moroun is trying to make the numbers work for filling the rest of the building.

“It would be really cool if some Fortune 500 company made it their headquarters in Detroit — and I wouldn’t turn down that opportunity,” Moroun said.

But a mixed use of the building is a more likely option, Moroun said.

The Moroun family’s real estate business, Crown Enterprises Inc., has concluded the top 13 floors of the train station can be redeveloped into office, hotel and residential space — or a combination of all three. Each floor has 25,000 square feet and the 12th and 13th floors were never developed, said Michael Samhat, president of Crown Enterprises.

“We can afford to make a case to develop the tower — with one big caveat — if the train station portion of the building doesn’t wreck it,” Moroun said. “That first floor is the elephant in the living room — you can’t just ignore it.”

The 110,000-square-foot first-floor concourse, with its marble walls and columns that soar to a 54-foot-tall ceiling, has limited commercial reuse options that would keep the building bustling, Samhat said.

Interest in the building has picked up in recent years after the Morouns spent more than $8 million installing 1,100 new windows, building a freight elevator in the building’s original smokestack and removing debris and toxic asbestos.

Crown Enterprises was recently “close” to inking a deal with one potential tenant to occupy 60 percent of the tower, Moroun said.

“What kind of did us in was the train station portion,” Moroun said. “Once we started factoring it in, it drove the cost out of reason.”

A neighborhood rising

One reason Moroun is mulling a return to trains is to create foot traffic in the burgeoning Corktown neighborhood and Roosevelt Park, which separates the train station from the Michigan Avenue streetfront.

Connecting Corktown to the central business district with mass transit could spur development west of downtown, Moroun said.

“Now you’ve connected Corktown, this area here, and you’re rolling,” Moroun said during a lunchtime interview at Nemo’s, a popular Corktown bar.

The QLine came to fruition thanks to some deep pockets with business interests who were looking to spur redevelopment momentum along the Woodward corridor.

Auto racing and truck rental industrialist Roger Penske spent the better part of a decade championing the 6.6-mile QLine loop, eventually convincing corporations, universities and hospitals along Woodward to invest $187.3 million in the street car system’s capital costs and initial operations.

Troy-based Kresge Foundation donated $50 million — the largest single gift — and the foundation’s president, Rip Rapson, has shown interest in helping finance another street car project.

Steudle said the development of mass transit along Michigan Avenue needs an influential voice like Penske and Rapson provided for the Woodward Avenue project.

“If you get more people excited about it and you get somebody like Matthew Moroun who has a lot of influence, you never know what will happen,” Steudle said.

The family history

Manuel "Matty" Moroun

In recent years, Matthew Moroun has become the public face of his family’s businesses, which are primarily based in Warren.

As vice chairman, he has essentially taken over day-to-day operations of the business empire his father and grandfather spent decades building from a small truck-hauling company in Detroit to a nationwide trucking and logistics firm, CenTra Inc.

The Moroun family is widely known for its ownership of the Ambassador Bridge and a years-long battle for construction of a publicly-owned bridge to preserve its lucrative control of international truck traffic.

Last week, the Moroun-owned Detroit International Bridge Co. won conditional approval from the Canadian government to build a new bridge to replace the 88-year-old Ambassador. That win came a week after Moroun companies suffered another loss in court in a bid to block construction of the new Gordie Howe International Bridge.

Matty Moroun, who turned 90 in June and remains chairman of his companies, has spent decades acquiring property in Detroit for his bridge, commercial trucking and logistics operations.

His most notable asset is the train station, which he bought in 1995.

A razor wire fence has encircled the building ever since as the Morouns have contemplated multiple ideas for the train station’s reuse, ranging from a trade and customs center to Detroit’s police headquarters.

None of the previous ideas have ever come to fruition, much less gained any traction. And, until late 2015, the building sat windowless for years, making it a frequent stop for gawkers of Detroit’s so-called “ruin porn.”

The years of inaction has made Matty Moroun the subject of public scorn, which is not lost on the son.

Mindful of the public’s emotional attachment to the hulking train depot, Matthew Moroun said he feels “an immense pressure” to deliver the best redevelopment solution for both the city and his family’s bottom line.

“I don’t want it to be an economic disaster for my family,” he said. “So I’ve gotta get it right on both ends.”